On Remedies to Satan's Devices (the entire paper)

Here is my complete paper of comments on and ideas about Thomas Brooks' book. It also includes ideas about how the work is applicable today.

Thomas Brook's 'Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices' is an easy reading 160 page workbook for recognizing sin, its source, consequences, and overcoming sin. As part of the course on Spiritual Warfare recognition of sin and its source plays an important, salient role. As in 'Holy War' by John Bunyan, Brook's approach is more oriented toward defense against sin and snares of sin than in defining what sin is, as one might expect to find in the course on 'Sin'.

Brooks enumerates four salient features of Satan's assault upon man's soul as he tries to wrest it away from salvation and eternal life with the Lord unto pure worldliness and evil as an end-in-itself. Brooks also provides remedies to the attacks.

1)SATAN'S DEVICES TO DRAW THE SOUL TO SIN-12 devices and remedies

2)SATAN'S DEVICES TO KEEP SOULS FROM HOLY DUTIES, TO HINDER SOULS IN HOLY SERVICES, TO KEEP THEM OFF FROM RELIGIOUS PERFORMANCES-8 devices and remedies

3)SATAN'S DEVICES TO KEEP SAINTS IN A SAD, DOUBTING, QUESTIONING AND UNCOMFORTABLE CONDITION-8 devices and remedies

4)SATAN'S DEVICES TO DESTROY AND ENSNARE ALL SORTS AND RANKS OF MEN IN THE WORLD-5 devices and remedies

Brooks has an important chapter about sin masquerading as virtue, and that stimulates some deeper philosophical thinking about what sin is, what original sin was comprised of, how its correction was implemented and how sin appears to be for human beings as an existential encounter.

As an entry to that consideration one might inquire if all sin appears to be a pleasure. If in fact all sin seems to be a pleasure and if human beings generally pursue pleasure then it seems understandable that many people would do away with discrimination between different kinds of objects or activities of pleasure where some are considered good and some are regarded as evil. Do human beings ever do anything for-themselves they regard as evil, or isn't it instead always something thought to be good (even if one suicides to make a 'better' circumstance?

Socrates pursued virtue and would have had no trouble in saying that a man should pursue virtue instead of pleasure. If pleasure coincides with virtue well-enough, yet if a pleasure is in conflict with virtue choose virtue. Classical virtue may have a realm-of-forms and neo-Platonic foundation, and that is not worldly. It's theoretical, abstract and disregards pleasure when it must to the point of favorable comparison with the illusory regard in which material reality is held as maya or moksha by Hindu and Buddhists. Sakyamuni as a philosopher held reality to be illusory with nothing following life. His way of thinking was comparable to contemporary physical cosmology regarding the cosmos as a phenomenal steady-state of entangled particle-waves arising from virtual energy in a spatial-field with no permanent meaning or existence beyond the temporal.

The pursuit of pleasure rather than enlightenment of virtue or cosmology is for classical philosophers including Buddha an abnegation of man's higher calling to transcend material being and understand reality and mankind's place in it. Socrates felt that man's place in the Universe was a stage on life's way as a fractional element of the divine spirit existing in a protocol level of the Universe-project by The Intelligence (comparable to the Holy Spirit). Buddha thought nothing existed beyond or followed the temporal phenomenon. Christian virtue is different than either, and yet has similarities and differences to numerous to mention here.

Christian virtues are ontological duties following the will of God being. Christians resist sin keeping focused on the revealed will of God for human living. It has been compared to being a soldier on a mission eschewing worldly pleasures and disregarding pains and privations in order to complete the mission, or as Paul said, to win the race and the prize of eternal life with the Lord. The Christian life is definitely not one of simple pursuit of pleasure except that the highest good-God and salvation for a Christian-is also the greatest pleasure. It is not a material pleasure though.

Here one discerns the problems of what the good is, and of the inability of humans to do anything besides choose what they think is good and not evil for-themselves. Logically and rationally none could paradoxically Paul said that none are good-no not one, and Jesus paradoxically asked 'why dost thou call me good, none are good save the Father in heaven'.

Original sin's correction or containment was for Adam and Eve to be downloaded into temporal space-time from some sort of Paradise without it. For the spirit to be inextricably bound in flesh with all of its temporal thermodynamic urges and requirements is to experience sin and the biological drive for pleasure. Pleasure is a primitive sense experience of what works for the good of an organism. Maybe an amoeba feels some pleasure as it devours some micro-organism.

Scientists like to say that life is just getting more energy input, yet I think that nearly all organic life must be pursuing that with pleasure as the motivator reinforcing behavior. For human beings to have spiritual awareness though they must think at a higher level and move beyond physical pleasure to philosophy and spirit. Wisdom is of God, and leads one to spirit and God, and that is good.

When God created the Universe after each day or phase of creation He said that it was good. Mass-energy for itself that God formed the Universe of is good, yet when human experience of the temporal Universe has their spirit implicitly entangled in and formed in mass-energy it is challenging to contemplate spiritual affairs or to know what that might be. The philosopher David Hume was an anti-sophist in effect urging people to cast into the flames books with metaphysics. Hume regarded metaphysics as nonsense. Modern anti-Christians and atheist therefore like David Hume a lot since anything spiritual seems to be metaphysical non-sense for the just-worldly. What is wisdom to man is foolishness to God.

Today's cultured despiser of religion- often atheists with a sensible organic self-limitation-despise the concept of sin. Sin is more than simply a discrimination against pleasure. Sin is not limited to existential temptation to-oneself; sin can occur in a dialectical paradigm wherein what is pleasure for one is harmful to another.

Sin is a meta-social delimitation marker for right conduct too. To avoid sin has social consequences for the good, while choosing to sin often has bad social consequences. An easy example is murder; the Joker might enjoy murder-art yet his victims not at all. Adolph Hitler probably thought he was pursuing good and pleasure, yet 50 million people died as a consequence and hundreds of millions more were wounded or displaced. Sin is a socially transmitted disease like herpes or H.I.V.-it goes around and comes around; the spiritually discerning soul eschews it.

Sartre's 'Being and Nothingness' is tome of first-person description of conscious experience. Nothing is expressed on sin or of ontology in the book. It is a technical -analytical description of the phenomena of mind. His sequel 'The Critique of Dialectical Reason' describes how people interact socially from an existential point of view. One could use 'The Critique' as a template for how sin-particular and general-circulate quite readily. Of course there are meta-Diabolic elements at work besides we are informed in the Bible. One discerns a large social awareness disconformity between sin as existential pleasure phenomenality and sin as a dialectical social currency with grave consequences.

Just being in the material world as a part of it without thought at all would make cabbages if the human race. Rational thought is fundamental for human beings. Spirit is greater than and the foundation of the material. Christians have that as an article of faith and so did classical virtue. Thus one returns returns to Brook's 'Remedies Against Satan's Devices'; sin is the organic form of pursuit of pleasure only-a regression to full amoeba-hood morally, with disastrous consequences for the human spirit, and the hope of the human spirit for reconciliation unto God through the atoning sacrifice of the Son.

Brooks wrote the following on page 22-23;"Remedy (4). Seriously to consider, That even those very sins that Satan paints, and. Seriously to consider, That even those very sins that Satan paints, and puts new names and colors upon, cost the best blood, the noblest blood, the life-blood, the heart-blood of the Lord Jesus. That Christ should come from the eternal bosom of his Father to a region of sorrow and death; that God should be manifested in the flesh, the Creator made a creature; that he who was clothed with glory should be wrapped with rags of flesh; he who filled heaven and earth with his glory should be cradled in a manger; that the almighty God should flee from weak man—the God of Israel into Egypt; that the God of the law should be subject to the law, the God of the circumcision circumcised, the God who made the heavens working at Joseph's homely trade; that he who binds the devils in chains should be tempted; that he, whose is the world, and the fullness thereof, should hunger and thirst; that the God of strength should be weary, the Judge of all flesh condemned, the God of life put to death; that he who is one with his Father should cry out of misery, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matt. 27:46); that he who had the keys of hell and death at his belt should lie imprisoned in the sepulcher of another, having in his lifetime nowhere to lay his head, nor after death to lay his body; that that HEAD, before which the angels do cast down their crowns, should be crowned with thorns, and those EYES, purer than the sun, put out by the darkness of death; those EARS, which hear nothing but hallelujahs of saints and angels, to hear the blasphemies of the multitude; that FACE, which was fairer than the sons of men, to be spit on by those beastly wretched Jews; that MOUTH and TONGUE, which spoke as never man spoke, accused for blasphemy; those HANDS, which freely swayed the scepter of heaven, nailed to the cross; those FEET, "like unto fine brass," nailed to the cross for man's sins; each sense pained with a spear and nails; his SMELL, with stinking odor, being crucified on Golgotha, the place of skulls; his TASTE, with vinegar and gall; his HEARING, with reproaches, and SIGHT of his mother and disciples bemoaning him; his SOUL, comfortless and forsaken; and all this for those very sins that Satan paints and puts fine colors upon! Oh! how should the consideration of this stir up the soul against sin, and work the soul to fly from it, and to use all holy means whereby sin may be subdued and destroyed!"

Brooks commented on the way sin may approach gradually as is so evident today in the American media where each advance of sin culturally is explained as 'the new normal'. Sin has become a kind of partner of science in the U.S.A. without scientific recognition of the diabolic impact. Scientific progress is exploited as evidence to support the eradication of moral criteria. A Universe without a divine presence that is entirely measurable and manipulatable by human action is reinforced constantly. Nothing in science is capable of studying the spiritual. In fact the spiritual cannot be defined in physical terms although researchers have studied the brain with imaging technologies during prayer to learn what regions might be used and what biochemical responses could produce euphoric or tranquil states of mind.

The human mind does exist within a physical brain housing unit (skull) and may consciously and subconsciously have a relationship with God. The relationship is entirely of grace though-God provides all communication required, all divine instructions given through revelation. In physical terms of power the relationship is mono-polar that like gravity flows in just one direction (toward the heart matter in the case of gravity). Numerous physical means for God to accomplish one-direction control of this Universe and of its social issues are theoretically possible and appear to the thinking individual rather easily. For instance the entire history of the Universe could have been predetermined, or God could have the allegorical 'tachyon' channel to subtly talk with select people. With radio one hears an example of one-way communication. With a superior spiritual communications and control 'technology' God can interrogate and shape the mass-energy of the Universe in conformity with his own choosing from among possibilities He made himself. That raises the question of why God chooses anything or creates anything to choose from. It also may bear indirectly on the subject of why evil exists though God is perfect.

The problem of exploiting science to support the reduction of moral standard accountability to divine standards reminds me of when cosmonauts orbiting earth in the early 1960s said they had visited heaven, looked around and didn't see God anywhere-that was an almost primitive misinterpretation of the Bible's use of the word 'heaven'.

To be fair though evolution is a stumbling block for many fundamentalist Christians who share the opinion of the Diabolic applications of science crowd that evolution theory is in direct contradiction to the Bible account of creation and actually, it is not. Dr. Science quality quack creation pseudo-science harms Christian evangelical missions work to save the lost. It isn't necessary for Christians to disprove evolution in order to defend the point that God created the Universe. God could have evolved 14 billion years in 14 seconds if he had a will to-his mastery of matter and energy is beyond any human comprehension. Popular education is based on evolution science and it has a kind of self-evident truth about it that dogmatic, hierarchical priesthoods without proper hermeneutic templates find impossibly difficult to explain without quack science to contradict it directly.

Popular movies with evolution themes saturate public imagination and they offer fuel to the Diabolan fire to burn down the Christian mission. The film 'Lucy' with a cute blond named Scarlet Johansson playing the lead role is about evolution-with eponymous reference to the first human-like ancestor skeleton found living around Lake Tanganyika 3.5 million years ago-a short Australopithecus female about 3.5 feet tall. The star of the film 'Lucy' is a modern woman who, like that 3.5 million year old fossil excavated by Lewis Leakey's son Richard, is named 'Lucy'.

The second chapter of Genesis has Adam and Eve created outside space-time in a place named Eden. They are then thrown out of Eden and into a world that was created in stages-evolved-in chapter one. It is possible to argue about the values of the time literals of chapter one (e.g. how long is a day before light or stars were made), yet to interpolate Bishop Usher's calculations into chapter one is a mistake made by the Diabolic and the fundamentalist set-and the latter are also wrong about interpreting the time and symbolic referent values of the Revelation quite commonly (pre-tribbers have it wrong).

At any rate Lucy accidentally ingests an illegal drug designed by the Japanese Yakuza in enormous quantities that have the side effect of making her brain use 100% instead of the normal 10%. Morgan Freeman is a kind of scientific narrator explaining evolution's biological history on Earth during the film. There are flashes of predator-prey actions and comparisons to moderns in the same roles. Lucy will evolve herself to the highest condition eventually in record time.

She evolves millions or billions of years ahead intellectually speaking in a day or two with the magic smart drug. So therefore logically she understands quantum mechanics itself and makes herself into a quantum computer to reshape reality. That's a neat trick that I have though God could do, yet one sees that it would be science and immoral Diabolans that would have that divine kind of power in the brave new world (a point not made in the movie 'Lucy').

Unknown perhaps to the producers of Lucy- another skeleton was dug up a couple of years ago 40 miles north of Lucy's burial site that is two feet taller. It is a male named, I believe, Mr. Big who would have towered over Lucy.

Mr. Big was 5.5 feet tall and lived in the same time period 3.5 million years ago. Mr. Big was probably the brains of the outfit and was the same height as the average 19th century Brit. Maybe Brit brains advanced in 3.5 million years somewhat since they invented fish and chips whereas the Tanganikans probably ate fish sushi style, yet 'Sir' Elton John's moral reasoning has taken a turn Mr. Big might have regarded as undignified.

There are fewer murders in modern Britain than there were in the Middle East of 10,000 B.C. when Jericho began to be settled. Mass war capacity has increased with homosexuals on U-boats, Tridents or whatever ready to push nuclear missile trigger-buttons in a kinder, gentler way. High-tech Megadeath is so civilized. It takes a while to build up, like catastrophe theory mathematics, while in the interregnum from doom atheist organizations extol the love, peace and humanhood of sin and faithlessness. The film starring Lucy should have had Mr. Big playing the sadistic, chauvinist, and little-better than a chimpanzee-sort-of-guy named Caesar.

A world with no religion too would lead to a Universe run by and for Satan evidently-and that would be consistent with what is known about the primary Lord of Looseness from reading scripture. On the other hand, with enough Priesthood of Believers organizing maybe that is the way a Christian majority will arise. A Christian majority using ecological economic leadership (it is more than classical economic abstract market management and includes an environmental 'hands on' approach neither Luddite nor oppressively stagnant as a kind of Egyptian, dynastic 'time-freeze' cultural stasis of conservation).

Thus one notes why Hollywood and the Federal government have decreasing trouble advancing morals that are not consistent with divine standards. Especially in the same sex marriage issue, a history of Hollywood and media, television and federal promotion of homosexuality built to a crescendo this month with former athlete Bruce Jenner's cover on Vanity Fare in a bikini as a castrated makeover into a neo-woman. With 'Sir' Elton John leading the British homosexual advance and with the Rhodes Scholar influence of Bill Clinton the decline of U.S. moral norms was inevitable without an active priesthood of believers existing as an ecclesiastical backbone for the church.

Brooks wrote on page 24; "Sin gains upon man's soul by insensible degrees.”The beginning of the words of his mouth is foolishness, and the end of his talking is mischievous madness." (Eccles. 10:13) Corruption in the heart, when it breaks forth, is like a breach in the sea, which begins in a narrow passage, until it eats through, and cast down all before it. The debates of the soul are quick, and soon ended; and that may be done in a moment that may undo a man forever. When a man has begun to sin, he knows not where, or when, or how he shall make a stop of sin. Usually the soul goes on from evil to evil, from folly to folly, until it is ripe for eternal misery!"

Devices and Remedies

Brooks describes many devices that Satan uses to snare the human soul and take it down. Brooks also present remedies to each device. One of the devices given is that of presenting examples of famous sinners who later were forgiven. Brooks explains that such a device can lull the soul to incautious acquiescence in sin. The reader finds that profound repentance followed those famous sins.

Brooks explains that the Satanic device luring men to sin with examples of famous sinners such as David or Peter who were still forgiven, in order to trick the soul into believing that little (or large) sins are forgivable and not to worry much about doesn't show the huge repentance of those men to their one-time huge sin.

Brooks page 31; "And therefore, though you may escape temporal judgments, yet you shall not escape spiritual judgments: 'How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation?' (Heb. 2:3) says the apostle. Oh! therefore, whenever Satan shall present God to the soul as one made up all of mercy, that he may draw you to do wickedly, say unto him, that sins against God's mercy, will bring upon the soul the greatest misery; and therefore whatever becomes of you, you will not sin against mercy."

Brooks wrote on page 30 that;

"Remedy (2). The second remedy against this device of Satan is, solemnly to consider,That God is as JUST, as he is merciful. As the Scriptures speak Him out to be a very merciful God, so they speak Him out to be a very just God. Witness His casting the angels out of heaven and His binding them in chains of darkness until the judgment of great day.* Witness His turning Adam out of Paradise. Witness His drowning of the old world. Witness His raining hell out of heaven upon Sodom. Witness all the troubles, losses, sicknesses, and diseases, which are in the world. Witness Tophet, which "has long been prepared; it has been made ready for the king. Its fire pit has been made deep and wide, with an abundance of fire and wood; the breath of the LORD, like a stream of burning sulfur, sets it ablaze." (Isaiah 30:33) Witness His treasuring up of wrath against the day of wrath. But above all, witness the pouring forth of all His wrath upon His bosom Son, when Jesus bore the sins of His people, and cried out, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?""

and

"The third remedy against this device of Satan is, seriously to consider, That sins against God's mercy will bring the greatest and sorest judgments upon men's heads and hearts. Mercy is God's Alpha, justice is His Omega. David, speaking of these attributes, places mercy in the forefront, and justice in the rearward, saying, "I will sing of Your love and justice." (Psalm 101:1). When God's mercy is despised, then His justice takes the throne!* God is like a prince, who sends not his army against rebels before he has sent his pardon, and proclaimed it by a herald of arms: he first hangs out the white flag of mercy; if this wins men in, they are happy forever; but if they remain rebellious, then God will put forth his red flag of justice and judgment. If His mercy is despised, His justice shall be felt! The higher we are in dignity, the more grievous is our fall and misery."

Brook's 'Remedies...' page 30-"Ah Lord! this mercy! humbly beg, that whatever you give me up to, you will not give me up to the ways of my own heart; if you will give me up to be afflicted, or tempted, or reproached, I will patiently sit down, and say, It is the Lord; let him do with me what seems good in his own eyes. Do anything with me, lay what burden you will upon me, so you do not give me up to the ways of my own heart. Augustine says, 'It is a human thing to fall into sin, devilish to persevere therein, and divine to rise from it. Deliver me, O Lord, from that evil man—myself!"

Of the many devices that Satan has used to dupe the soul to sin, one of the more challenging is the example given unto the suffering, poor Christian of the prosperity of wicked men (and women) who follow not the ways of the Lord, prosper and are entirely without interest in God. In theory the Christian is tempted to give up and adapt to the corrupt practices of celebrity debauchees and godless predators of the time. Brook’s comment about what the reprobate or lost lack is very good writing, and I will post a paragraph of that…

Page 44 ‘Precious Remedies’; “Yet all this is nothing to what they lack. They lack a saving interest in God, Christ, the Spirit, the promises, the covenant of grace, and everlasting glory. They lack acceptance and reconciliation with God; they lack righteousness, justification, sanctification, adoption, and redemption. They lack the pardon of sin, and power against sin, and freedom from the dominion of sin. They lack that favor with God, which is better than life, and that joy which is unspeakable and full of glory, and that peace which passes understanding, and that grace, the least spark of which is more worth than heaven and earth. They lack a house that has foundations, whose builder and maker is God. They lack those riches that perish not, the glory that fades not, that kingdom that shakes not.”

Issues about worldliness and how to be in the world with regard to God are a substantial part of the empirical challenge of human existence. Often the challenge is presented as a choice between worldliness and spirituality yet that criterion is somewhat disingenuous. Obviously it is a difficult to clarify disjunctive since the spiritual too are in the world and experience all of its demands with those that choose to be entirely worldly and without spiritual interest. I think the phrasing and criterion of the choice is itself in the province of Satan. Christians are in-the-world yet not-of-it. The lost are in-the-world and are-of-the-world.

Earlier I have written of consciousness and sentience as being of a spiritual nature different than mass and material for-itself that is apparently not sentient or conscious. The awareness of being in-the-world yet not-of-the-world is obviously like the relationship of mind to being-in-the-Universe-of-matter yet not-of-it. Sentience differs from inanimate matter.

When Adam and Eve ate of the tree of knowledge they transitioned apparently from a naïve condition of self-awareness in an Eden of a different space-time composition than the material Universe to a self-awareness of a deeper nature (aware of their own nakedness) with an infinite potential to learn. God commented that they had become as little Gods and relocated them to the containment facility of the Universe where thermodynamic worldliness and consumerism of all matter and energy that exists is an implicit aspect of the structure. Within that Universe-on-fire consuming itself original sin is inherent. Mankind are inevitable drawn toward the energy stream of pure worldliness even seeking fission, fusion and zero-point energy immersion in it-perhaps as self evolving to quantum computers making forms of pleasurable experience for-itself (as an archetype of the human conscious being). Mankind was cast out of Eden to stop them from eating of the tree of life-eternal life as well. With the hungry nature of inquiry and disobedience to God Adam and Eve were cast into an environment resembling themselves with gravity hungering to attract other mass and consume it to a black hole forever ready for more.

In-the-spirit of faith in God and the sacrifice of the Lord to atone for the problem of original sin (and subsequent sin) the Christian is set-apart behaviorally and self-consciously from worldly behavior. Worldly behavior that is not reclaimed from the draw toward pervasive Universal thermodynamic field characteristics has abandoned spiritual accountability for-itself and is condemned to eternal hell. It seems as if Satan is always reinforcing aspects of worldliness that usually draw humans to them and uses those attractions to renormalize spiritual inclinations for solely worldly thought and behavior.

Worldly behavior is in opposition to spiritually directed. Spiritual behavior may not be supportive of numerous worldly political and social goals of the lost, and the lost may therefore view the spiritual as worldly foes. A Sunday morning of beer drinking, football and wrestling isn't the same as attending a priesthood of believers liturgy.

Sin becomes sin only when spiritual law exists Paul observed. Spiritual laws intervene in worldly behavior that causes cruelty and destruction to human beings and the human spirit. It's probably not a coincidence that spiritual law intended to draw the human spirit back to a transcending trust in God also discourage human behavior that is destructive to the self and others.

Sin labels behaviors that cause the destruction of the self, of others, and of spiritual awareness of God and his will for humans to be in a right relationship with him. His perfect goodness requires perfect obedience and order, yet that liberates, for God is absolutely good, right and just. For a human to be in-the-world and to be only worldly is fundamentally to be a raw savage, thermodynamically immersed animal without moral reservations. Even worse than that, the thermodynamic animal with no good whatsoever, given a human level sentience intelligence quotient, has the capability for unlimited lies, dissimulation, deceit and wickedness, believing it has no transcendent moral authority (God) to be concerned about, if it even thinks that far. It is free to develop itself and its technology through innumerable permutations of ‘progress’ until it becomes a quantum computer Cyborg or whatever. None of that direction is good for humanity , yet humanity with a majority saved through the grace of the Holy Spirit, the Lord Jesus and God the Father would have better prospects empirically and existentially in a post-space/time dimensional sort of way.

Just God has the wisdom about how to address the thermodynamic and sin criterion ultimately, and just God knows how mind as spirit with physical being characteristics to support it can exist for eternity without burning everything up applying entropy transformations to make practico-inert substances and event-processes.

Being in-the-world yet not-of-it means that Christians have a deeper spiritual awareness of the creation that God made (the Universe and its content) as good, since God made it as an event-process in a thermodynamic stream, and God is good creating good. With God tempering the problem of original sin to a subdued level through the salvation of the Lord a better humanity may be able to negotiate their existence in the thermodynamic Universe with better Christian ethics and social relationships enabling safer progress through the shoals of materiality transitions from organization to disorganization of inherent energy and mass.

It is a paradox that as society prospers through the grace of the spirit and as society generally achieves a better condition it has sometimes become entirely worldly again, drawn toward attractions of the spiritless realm of thermodynamic content as an end-in-itself. Practico-inert manufactures and evolved objects permuting form and content through blind chance (rather than the Queen of Heaven in this century) seem opulent seductive and irresistible.

The human experience today has massive common social thought and beliefs disseminated through electronic media and replicated micro-socially as monkey-see, monkey-hear, monkey-do. The oppressive pressure of incorrect or inadequate intellectual criteria assaults individuals including Americans in continua of corruption. Plain worldliness as conscious applied philosophy and religion is an existential oxymoron of form since awareness of the world only arises with sentience that is a basic spiritual phenomenon differing in character from the forms of inanimate worldliness.

Mass social worldliness devoid of regard for the problems of sin directs the course of social progress toward world-lines with enhanced prospects for mass destruction, materially speaking. Regardless, worshipers of blind chance thermodynamic primacy speak of comfort and safety while Godly ethics are deleted from their concerns.

Even so, people cannot be saved by spiritual laws that are externally structured. Such laws can only bring the soul to awareness of sin and inability to adhere to all of the laws of God they need to exist as God would have them exist. Only the sacrificial love of the Lord and faith in the Lord given by the spirit of grace that writes the laws of God upon hearts can draw the Christian along correct paths in this world and beyond. Only in transcending spiritual trust in Jesus Christ can the grace of God reach into the individual’s life and bring him into the sole project transcending space and time and move him from the city of man in-the-world into the city-of-God in the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is forever transitioning to eternity from the temporal, worldliness of the Universe. Its phase changes may be sudden, or it's descent from heaven as a new Jerusalem may be a gradual evolution of change. Phase change ordinal actualizations inferred from scripture often cannot be made with certainty.

The kingdom of God is within, because God transcends worldly constructions and appearances of mass and energy in any temporal Universe, and God knows where those that are of His flock are. God is within the heart of every Christian, and every Christian is in the kingdom of God, that is, where God wills it to be, when and how.

The choice is not really between worldliness and pure spirit someplace else metaphysically speaking. Some people would be worried about giving up security in the world and relying upon faith in spirit. About that the Lord said that those who save their lives would lose them. The choice is between a thermodynamic worldly alienation without spirit, or faith in the living God of spirit and truth. Faith in the living God provides Christian ethics incidentally that better human society and technological-environmental utility.

Thomas Brooks examines one particular Satanic device to snare the soul that has wide-spread use today. One use of the device occurs in the attack upon Genesis in order to make just-worldly cosmology opulent and desirable in comparison to the parchment of Genesis.

“DEVICE 1: By presenting the WORLD in such a dress, and in such a garb to the soul, as to ensnare the soul, and to win upon the affection of the soul.”

Satan seems to use confusion about the construction of the Universe today as a way to draw people to faithlessness and frustration with the Bible. Those that wouldn't know a proton from a quark leap to faith in electrons and football to disdain Genesis. The media love that. There is no need for frustration.

It is true that some theologians use 12th century scientific assumptions in interpreting Genesis and limit God a priori to means of construction readily understandable to the 3rd millennium man. That wish to a void scientific research and rely entirely upon the theological work of the past to understand Genesis tends to reinforce secular, atheist, arguments that the Genesis story is obsolete-when of course it is not; it is the interpretive paradigms or scientific assumptions shaping hermeneutics that are obsolete. Though cosmology and physics require intellectual effort to understand, a theologian ought not defend his own intellectual sloth.

Brooks councils that Christians ought to have humility in spiritual matters in order not to leap into error for-themselves. Brooks writes that Christians should not go beyond scripture. Regarding spiritual concerns I agree. Speculation about spirit that is not revealed by God can lead to error. The Universe is however more of a physical concern although it is possible to infer a spiritual foundation for matter. That question of how God who is Spirit creates mass that is something else (probably) is likely an unanswerable question. It may even be improperly formed. With humility though it is useful to know enough about cosmology such that Satan cannot back one into a corner and dictate one’s hermeneutic to oneself, perhaps requiring that one have a three or four thousand year old scientific database and accept that God too is limited to that.

There is a theoretical cornucopia for considering God's spiritual means of constructing energy, mass and dimensions. The Bible says that He said the word and that was enough. One can understand that vibrations of string theory could have commenced then with particular frequencies given to strings fluxing an inflation of the Universe with the new content. particular means might be inferred logical from what Genesis says to only a limited extent. One also has the material Universe to consider as a kind of artifact of God's creative impetus.

Scientists consider only the remnant of creation that is the familiar Universe of mass and energy, form and substance and extrapolate with theory from the observable about what makes it work. The question of how it originated is entangled with how it works. Because science is not theology it cannot meaningfully address abstract theological speculations concerning creation. Contemporary M-Theory, Emperor Theory and String Theory do consider hypothetical meta-physics of extra-dimensions as if they were mathematicians considering abstract forms of geometry, algebra, and topology with calculus, yet that has some verifiability issues. dialogues. This is just another of what I am sure are millions of potential credible methods that God could create and sustain a Universe that is conformable to Genesis. I will not strictly correlate the physics to Genesis day-phases herein. This is just the technical presentation for another theoretical mechanics outline version 7.1.

Spatial dimensions add up to time. This is a conjecture about reality and the construction of the Universe. That is, to clarify, about the content of how it exists-not a question about if God created it or not. The Universe outside Wal-mart has some sort of means of being not made in China. Physicists contemplate an infinity of Universes, Higgs fields, particles, waves, quantum uncertainty and so forth as content enabling stuff comprising mass and energy. Cycles of shaping and forming the play-dough of matter with wonderful illustrations of stars and galaxies producing wonderful dust, elements and etc. replete with smart creatures able to think and watch football or shop at Wal-mart, even listen like programmable fuzzy robots to NPR. I am not writing about all of that nor making ontological arguments. I believe God created what is through one means or another. This paper is more like asking the question; did God use a 9 iron or a wedge to get the ball into the hole?

Space and time seem to coincide in expansion. One wonders about the nature of time and how it differs from space, or if it does; as time appears to increase like space in another way-a dimension called time where one can move forward.

If just spatial dimensions are moving and a conscious observer experiences the intersection of moving dimensions as time, can time be said to exist externally, or isn't time just a subjective perception of the observer even though it is a real experience?

If none of the dimension sheets intersected there would be no possibility for the existence of time. Maybe consciousness requires change of intersecting dimensions and the experience of time to exist.

It seems possible that like two-dimensional ants living on a two-dimensional world-sheet pushed forward by a large finger, it would not be possible to measure the force moving the entire dimensional world sheet from outside the world sheet-even if another world sheet is passing through it, such that there are really just two one-dimensional world sheets that added together seem to be a solitary two-dimensional Universal world-sheet. If the world-sheets have changing topology, of the dimensions generate energy through inter-dimensional contact, there is still no way to measure the power of God pushing the world sheet dimensions along their course.

So as a Christian thinking about this, and about the perennial matter of what component of the experience of reality is subjective and what objective, the 'let there be light' matter indicates that light was perceived by God when it was made to exist. For human beings or other beings in-a-Universe light would be a way of experiencing an energy field of a particular sort. Such energy would not appear as light does to a human though without an observer experiencing photons as human do, unless of course some other particle or wave in a field could cause a sensation similar to that caused by photons such that a human would think of it as light. That energy could be caused when dimension plates intersect as virtual energy to stimulate Higgs field quanta, and time could be thought of as discrete, relative positions within the temporal transition of dimension sheets.

Physicists have a term-concepts named configuration space and phase space that I can use to refer to the condition of dimension sheets. The configuration of content and form of a dimension sheet is static or fixed. When dimension sheets intersect they stimulate changes, and the changes can be called phase space. Phase space with energy and matter thermodynamical changes is an emergent phenomenon of intersecting dimension sheets. I suppose the relational angles at which dimensions intersect might effect the phase space configuration (a useful retro-term).

A question I would have about phase space is to what extent constructions in phase space are more that emergent phenomena of time? Would phase space constructions exist in a meta-phase configuration? Could emergent matter-energy construction in phase space redistribute content from one dimension sheet to another? Might dimension sheets change relative size in that event?

Plainly one has no idea how many dimension sheets could exist or why they should 'in the beginning'. It could be like an infinite deck of dimension-sheet cards the Lord used to construct a 'house of cards' of a temporal, expanding Universe from a singularity of one dimension; increasing until His purposes are served; perhaps after determining what souls will go to eternal heaven, and for whom the bells will toll in hell.

Doubting,Questioning and Uncomfortable Conditions

Brooks illuminates eight Satanic devices in the section of Doubting, questioning and uncomfortable conditions. Yet Brooks also makes probably the most concise statement about sin and its relationship to the saved Christian that I have read anywhere outside the Bible. The clarification is a fine theological statement en passant though that was probably not Brooks intent. His intent instead was to affirm that the doubts and questions a Christian may have in uncomfortable conditions are rather common. I will post the quote from page 87;

"Remedy (1). The first remedy is for weak believers to consider, That though Jesus Christ has not freed them from the presence of sin, yet he has freed them from the damnatory power of sin. It is most true that sin and grace were never born together, neither shall sin and grace die together; yet while a believer breathes in this world, they must live together, they must keep house together. Christ in this life will not free any believer from the presence of any one sin, though he does free every believer from the damning power of every sin. 'There is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh—but after the Spirit' (Rom. 8:1). The law cannot condemn a believer, for Christ has fulfilled it for him; divine justice cannot condemn him, for that Christ has satisfied; his sins cannot condemn him, for they in the blood of Christ are pardoned; and his own conscience, upon righteous grounds, cannot condemn

him, because Christ, that is greater than his conscience, has acquitted him.

My sins hurt me not, if they like me not. Sin is like that wild fig-tree, or ivy in the wall; cut off stump, body, bough, and branches, yet some strings or other will sprout out again, until the wall be plucked down."

Brooks in developing remedies to sin explains what sin is to a certain extent. He explains that it strikes against the dignity and majesty of the Lord and hence against the well-being of man.

Reading Brooks with the particular way of language use common to the era it occurred to me that language use of a given era is tied to the particular technological and physical infrastructure as well as the social. Sexual imagery in social relationships comprise a substantial part of ancient cultures and still of some languages that are genderized.

One might decide that a spear is masculine-'el spearo' and that a car is feminine if it has bucket seats and large headlights 'ella cara' (I am making up these example words). Brooks writes that 'the devils breasts are fruits of wickedness'. I had not given thought to the devil as anything besides masculine, yet of course in the transgender era where Bruce Jenner opted for financial promotion to pseudo-womanhood a masculine devil could be thought of as feminine too. I only note this because the idea of sexuality and relationships that occur in the Bible and to recent times reflect common sorts of understanding that might be comprehended by anyone since they are so very basic.

The church as the 'bride of Christ expresses the close relationship the Lord has with the saved rather than a sexual relationship, yet it is used throughout Christian history to describe the relationship of Christians to the Lord.

That brings me to consider further a few more ideas. I have recently used the idea of God as being a computer operating system writer and people as existing like program elements within the operating system that cannot even possible every see the author directly. If the author wrote a program avatar of himself into the system that he communicated with then maybe characters living in some program would encounter the author directly. The author-programmer might also put his holy spiritual helper for humanity within the system if he wanted, with some sort of protocol written in so that it is mostly a meta-system, behind-the-scenes phenomenon viewed by the human characters in the program.

In Bible times no one would have written about computer operating systems or used such references as allegories, and that I think is a reason why they are absent (obviously). Jesus used simple language to express complex thoughts, and the language was full of terms from construction, social relationships such as husband-wife and royal-subject common to the era.

The Lord's ideas though were notably different, and better than anything else expressed in writing anywhere in written material for at least 1800 years, and in my opinion remain unsurpassed. Not even Shakespeare constructs the subtlety and complexity of thought expressions as did the Lord.

I am thinking in particular of the Lord's reference to not Moses providing bread, but the Father in heaven, and that Jesus is the bread that came down from heaven that gives eternal life. The historical comparison and depth of understanding is rich, and the theological meanings very deep too- elegantly said with simplicity.

Moses is said to be an historical precursor of Jesus in some ways delivering the faithful from bondage. The chosen people were sustained in the desert with manna from heaven, and they underwent chastening and correction for straying now and then from the obedience from faith. Moses delivered the chosen people unto the threshold of the promised land, and Jesus delivers Christians unto the kingdom of God. The people of God in the desert were chosen and in effect, the elect. The people of God saved through faith in the Lord were also chosen people, and elect; faith must be provided by the grace of God. Destiny for anyone, the providence or provision of world-lines follow the design of God. The providence of God outwardly for humanity does not always indicate His inward providence of faith for the chosen. The wicked may prosper while the faithful are thrown to lions. Brooks wrote that those Christians sacrificed were more afraid of the lion of sin and faithlessness within than of empirical lions without.

Relationship-based allegories and analogies are fundamental in Biblical theology I think. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are perhaps reference-terms of a relation-based character understandable to human beings in this era.

I was rather surprised that reading Brooks would prompt some theological thought beyond the immediate topic of defense against sin yet it does. And I suppose I should not have been surprised as the topics that Brooks addresses are deep and fascinating.

I believe there must be quite a difference between computers and their cold artificial intelligence and that of actual sentient beings if such can be said to exist in the former case. So it might not be a good idea to compare God to a computer operating system author anyway. God as the Supreme sentient being is impossibly difficult to describe for less-than-omniscient beings, thus the Biblical era language that continues in gender inflected languages too the present on sex relationships is better than modern language relationship with terms like user, consumer, producer, owner, operator, predator, prey, inventor, machine language, etc.

I considered God the Father and Jesus as The Son in theological, sexed relationship terms and had to ask, if Mary was the Mother of God on Earth for the temporal birth of the Lord, then who is the Mother of God from eternity, since Jesus is co-eternal with the Father in all directions of eternity as infinite?

I should mention that infinity can be of different magnitudes with some greater than others perhaps. If a line beginning at point 0 extends too infinity on the positive side, isn't it less substantial in size than one that extends to infinity on the positive and negative sides?

It is possible that all infinities equalize in size once they begin to exist, if they are in quantum form and when made to exist do so immediately in all of their fullness to the nth degree. So even if a line that is infinite in one direction is made to exist in its fullness immediately upon being generated to existed at point time=0 is theoretically of less size since it might have a finite point at its theoretical starting point, even so it is of the same size as a line that was unbounded in tow directions rather than one. In some respects one would think that a one dimensional or one-direction line that is made to exist in quantum fullness in every state of being must negate its own beginning point at time=0 and seem to have no beginning.

Not to go too far off topic here; if Jesus is co--eternal with the Father and the Holy Spirit, and if God is One, then it is likely that the Son-for-others, and the Spirit-for-others may be such because the term concepts are such as may be comprehensible to less-than-omniscient beings. The Son and the Holy Spirit are real persons and roles made to appear and relate-to-others, yet each in-themselves exist as with God for eternity. God's omniscience and omnipotence lets him foreknow the relationships selected for actualization from eternity.

The use of representational language and complexity of expressions of theological structures made in simple ordinary language by the Lord is notably better than anything that would be written for quite a long time. Even today people in writing and the political world may have difficulty or an inability to use deep interdisciplinary ideas combing history, philosophy, theology, science, sociology and so forth into simple too understand, ordinary language with brevity.

Consider the Matthew 15 & 16 where Jesus gives the 'keys to the kingdom' after the first explicit declaration of faith by the first disciple-Simon (as well as his brother Andrew who was also chosen at the same time to follow him). the catholic church has tended to take the meaning literally as some sort of conveyance of keys after the death of the Lord to exclusive control of a limited distro Christian franchise. Instead the symbolically reborn, renamed Peter was given the keys to the kingdom of God for being the first Christian of true faith. Every other Christian would also be given the keys to the kingdom when they were saved. The kingdom of God is within the Lord said. like the keys to interpreting a code or the keys to winning at basketball with attention to fundamental, Peter and all other Christians are given the keys to enter the kingdom of God. All that a Christian does in the temporal world has reverberations in the eternal life that has, so far as the kingdom of God is concerned, though not yet fully actualized in appearance, already started.

'Precious Remedies' as a Christian Ethical Primer

'Precious Remedies to Satan's Devices' may be the best work on practical Christian ethics in the theology course. In describing the Satanic devices, Brooks must present a correct posture or bearing for the Christian to have in order that he may recognize and negate the Satanic devices to induce sin. The 160 page book is written with a very, regular, orderly style and is quite subtle in its recognition and expression of the kinds of devices Satan uses to undermine Christian being-in-the-world.

Brooks' book is a kind of early existentialist work I think. I am sure would surprise most that encounter that opinion as many have certain idea about what existentialism comprises such that it is more atheistic or assertive rather than descriptive of subjective phenomenalism. Existentialism describes the phenomenal experience of existence from the first person perspective. Sartre borrowed Descartes's paradigm of examining the cogito from first principles and just went farther with it as a French, Nobel Prize in Literature professor of philosophy might be predisposed.

It is from a rather existentialist point of view that a Christian views Satanic devices that attack him and even challenge his own interiority. Existentialism is concerned about the self-mind view of exteriority; the empirical world, and of heightened self-awareness of how the perceptions are translated physiologically into idea in-the-mind that comprise the experience of existence. A Christian must consider his own motives, emotions and ideas and consider if they are consistent with Christian ethics. Brooks urges the Christian to judge himself rather than others, to have humility and regard exteriorities and inward tendencies to sin with an objective Christian lens always seeking to renormalize behavior unto the expressed will of God. Brooks notes that many Christians cannot really love their fellow Christians or walk together spiritually the 99% of the distance on which they agree rather than not at all because of the 1% where they disagree (obviously not including apostasy as just 1%).

Christians accept divine revelation through the word of God as transcending the temporal and empirical realm of exteriority and even regard it as responsibility for their own phenomenal experience of mind existing with a physical body to support it. The Satanic devices that attack the Christian seems to be an exterior spiritual contest that Satan has to try to make a hostile takeover of the exterior, temporal realm in which a Christian soul in his body is temporally embedded. Yet of course the saved Christian soul-or his conscious experience of being, regardless of what actually makes it up, actually exists as self-awareness for the Christian, and as a saved individual of faith in The Lord is regarded by the Lord as existing in the kingdom of God concurrent with its presence in-the-temporal-world phenomenally experienced.

Perhaps that is analogous to a matter of allegiance wherein a general would recognize the loyal members of his army even scattered amidst a hostile sea of opposition forces. A better metaphor is that of a Shepard recognizing his sheep, and the sheep recognizing the Shepard's voice as it calls through the darkness of the temporal world of sin, thermodynamics or social strife incited and sustained with sin.

"IV. DEVICE AGAINST POOR AND IGNORANT SOULS" -Brooks page 129

I found this device of Satan remarkable to read about. Just as Brooks describes ways that saints may be troubled in the chapter before, he finds the problem of ignorance to be of extreme importance. Ignorance is a way that is a broad road to destruction, and that today is especially fascinating since there are those that believe Christians are ignorant of many empirical things that would render there faith difficult to believe, if they only knew.

My Barnes and Noble Nook has a feature on the library page that lists four of the top 100 best sellers at the Nook store. Presently the number one book cover is of one titled 'A God in Ruins'. Annoying as I find that title, it is representative of Brooks device of ignorance. many of the ignorant have utter contempt for God and feel they can say and do whatever they like and that no god is present to supervene since Saint Darwin said so, and many other scientists have confirmed evolution. Evolutionists have the idea that conceptually speaking this Universe isn't big enough for both God and science to exist simultaneously and that scientific evolution has won the gunfight at K.O. corral.

The problem of ignorance does pertain on both sides of the equation of evolutionists vs. Christian fundamentalists though. I have decided to write my thesis on the topic of evolution vs correct interpretation of scripture, and the problem of ignorance is especially relevant.

Evolutionists do not know how to properly interpret the book of Genesis and for that matter neither do most fundamentalists. Neither side comprehends philosophically speaking the plethora of possibilities that God has as an omnipotent being to order the quantum Universe in whatever fashion He likes. That matters quite a bit on the issue, for each tend to have a particular idea, mostly shared equally and erroneously of what the first few chapters of Genesis are about and how they occurred.

neither is either subject especially cognizant of the written history of the book of Genesis or where and when it was composed. All of that matters. Perhaps I should sketch that here...

Abraham was given information from God that made it with him to Zion. He also had cultural information from Sumer. Abraham's information made it culturally to Jews in Egypt who provided it to Moses through cultural and oral tradition.

Moses probably invented the aleph beth and wrote down the ten commandments and other materials given from God. The works and life of Moses and the Jews given in the Pentateuch about the desert times following exodus are passed down to the time of David. Moses said that a future king of Israel would be devoted to God and study scripture and would write down everything Moses passed on.

King David likely fits that role. He probably gathered and correlated the Jewish historical materials and established a process to formally bring them together and write them down. That work might have continued into the court of Solomon and Rehoboam. it would have been an exacting and laborious process done with reverent devotion to detail and order. The J book might have been the first formally completed product of what would be the Pentateuch.

So even though one may have a reasonable idea of the historical order of composition of the Bible there is still the matter of interpreting it properly. The first chapter of Genesis with creation, the second chapter with the creation of Adam and Eve, and on to the flood story and more normal history thereafter is not very well understood by many. People wonder if the words are representational or literal; if they should be interpreted with values meaningful to people of that era when they were composed or in modern terms. Earth for instance in the year 2000 B.C. probably meant 'land'. If the whole land or whole Earth were said to be covered with water that would be a normal way of expressing the point about a civilization being drowned by flood-perhaps in the late Wisconsin Ice Age circa 10,000-15,000 B.C. Today people expect it to meant the entire nearly round planet called 'Earth' was covered with water higher than the highest mountain. That expectation is to select and isolate one particular meaning from all the meanings it really may have.

People expect the first six days to be Earth time periods before even the Universe existed. That just isn't reasonable. Geology has epochs and eons as time values each of vast length. Days for God may be of any time period independent of Earth time. There is simply a physical space-time disconformity that really exists between time=0 and Earth time even within relativity theory where space and time are a continuum of dimensions comprising a whole. Time is distorted as one approaches light speed, and God is working faster than light-not even comprehensible within Einsteinian parameters with light being the fastest theoretical speed.

Without going on about the problem of time values here too much, it might suffice to say that the days may be representational terms as good as any for periods when God worked and order of assembly over time that is not inconsistent with the most general parameters of the physical theorists ideas about cosmology developing incrementally over time changing into various forms. Why should any expect 3rd millennium B.C. presentations to be made in 3rd millennium A.D. terms that may not be proven correct anyway in another thousand years?

Adam and Eve were seemingly made elsewhere than in the Universe God evolved or made to exist in phases. They were dropped into thermodynamic space-time from outside it, and they started a civilization that was drowned in a flood, yet their kids survived the flood with them and they merged into the existing people of the world that were not chosen people evolved from the line of Adam and Eve.

Ignorance of the Bible and of physical cosmology has consequences that Brooks writes about well in another context. in addition to the numerous excellent remedies to Satan's terrible devices Tomas Brooks excoriates the problem of ignorance that was a stumbling block to faith in his day as it is now.

"Fourthly, As Satan has his device to destroy gracious souls, so he has his devices to destroy poor ignorant souls, and that sometimes, By drawing them to esteem ignorance, and to neglect, slight, and despise the means of knowledge. Ignorance is the mother of mistake, the cause of trouble, error, and of terror; it is the highway to hell,and it makes a man both a prisoner and a slave to the devil at once. Ignorance unmans a man; it makes a man a beast, yes, makes him more miserable than the beast which perishes. (Ignorant ones have this advantage—they have a cooler hell.) There are none so easily nor so frequently captured in Satan's snares—as ignorant souls. They are

easily drawn to dance with the devil all day, and to dream of supping with Christ at night. 'My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.' Hosea 4:6."

I have enjoyed reading Thomas Brooks excellent book this summer. Thomas Brooks wrote of a general category to ensnare all sorts of men (and women) of various ranks in the world and it's forth remedy is remarkably subtle once more. It is important to remind oneself that humility is more valuable than self seeking. That too easily leads one to value the temporal and temporal content more than the Lord and God and brings one to a bad temporal cul de sac with nowhere to go besides hell, as it were, at then end of life if not before.

After I make another post from Brooks on this topic I will write a little about Lot.

"Remedy (4). The fourth remedy against this device of Satan is, solemnly to consider, That self-seekers are self-losers and self-destroyers. Absalom and Judas seek themselves, and hang themselves. Saul seeks himself, and kills himself. Ahab seeks himself, and loses himself, his crown and kingdom. Pharaoh seeks himself, and overthrows himself and his mighty army in the Red Sea. Cain sought himself, and slew two at once, his brother and his own soul. Gehazi sought change of clothing—but God changed his clothing into a leprous skin. Haman sought himself, and lost himself. The princes and residents sought themselves, in the ruin of Daniel—but ruined themselves, their wives and children. That which self-seekers think should be a staff to support them, becomes by the hand of justice an iron rod to break them; that which they would have as springs to refresh them, becomes a gulf utterly to consume them. The crosses of self-seekers shall always exceed their mercies: their pain their pleasure; their torments their comforts. Every self-seeker is a self-tormentor, a self-destroyer; he carries a hell, an executioner, in his own bosom.

Adam seeks himself—and loses himself, paradise, and that blessed image that God had stamped upon him. Lot seeks himself (Gen. 13:10, 11) and loses himself and his goods. Peter seeks to save himself and miserably loses himself. Hezekiah in the business of the ambassadors, seeks himself, and lost and his life too, had not God saved him by a miracle."-page 112

Lot is more of a self-seeker than Abraham. Abraham opts to follow God and Abraham give his brother Lot a choice of land. Abraham is blessed by God more so than Lot. Lot is something of a dead end comparatively, a little more like Ishmael, yet he seems to have a certain dispensation about him or rather grace that overflows from God's choice of Abraham as the true line for the chosen people to grow.

It is somewhat interesting to consider the extent that things go wrong for Lot. Of course he is not Job, yet even so the city he moves to becomes totally depraved. Angels are sent to rescue Lot and his family yet eventually even Lot's wife is killed being turned into a pillar of salt by her own choosing willful disobedience to the commandment of God not to look back-perhaps wishfully-at Sodom and Gomorrah. After Lot does escape the doom and sleeps his daughters fiddle with him and conceive continuing the tradition of depravity.

In a sense Lot is once more an example or representation of the doom of humanity beyond the elect, chosen people of God. Abraham is that line of the elect and of the billions of saved Christians as numerous as sands on the beach or stars in the sky eventually-a large number. Lot-contaminated by the corruption of the world yet saved even so, and by ever so narrow of margins, with the full regard of God sending angels to rescue Abraham's brother and family, is that Christian targeted by Satan's devices who through the grace of God is given another chance to return to the kingdom of God. God is merciful.